Products as Agents: Metaphors for Designing the Products of the IoT Age Nazli Cila1, Iskander Smit2, Elisa Giaccardi3, Ben Kröse1 1 Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Digital Life Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
[email protected],
[email protected] 2 Info.nl, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
[email protected] 3 Delft University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design, Delft, The Netherlands,
[email protected] ABSTRACT empower people and enrich their everyday life. In order to Design-based inquiries into the networked products of the gain insights on how to create networked products that Internet of Things (IoT) lack a coherent understanding of attain these aims, as design researchers, we are required to the effect of such products on society. This paper proposes better understand not only the technical infrastructure and a new taxonomy for networked products, which would technological parameters of networked products (as IoT is allow articulation on their current state and future, and generally tackled in engineering and computer sciences), provide insights to designers for creating meaningful and but also the social relationships of these products with aesthetic products of IoT. Central to this framework is the everyday practices of people [37]. proposition that our current product-scape should be understood as a distribution of material agencies and best For the past couple of decades, there has been a shift in the analyzed through the metaphor of “agency”. We identify definition of designers’ main task from designing “things”, three types of agencies, i.e., the Collector, the Actor, and which are objects, to designing Things, namely socio- the Creator, and discuss how this approach could create material assemblies [6,7].